C41
LOMO Negative 400
Lomography Color Negative 400 is a versatile ISO 400 C-41 color negative film with vivid, saturated colors, believed to be a Kodak Alaris-manufactured emulsion, available in 35mm and 120 formats.
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The Kodak Hawkette is a fixed-focus, fixed-exposure box camera introduced by Kodak Limited -- Kodak's British manufacturing subsidiary -- around 1930. It uses 120 roll film and produces 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inch (roughly 6 x 9 cm) negatives. Its principal distinction from the contemporary American cardboard-and-leatherette Brownie box cameras is its body material: the Hawkette is constructed primarily from Bakelite, an early thermoset plastic, making it an early example of plastic-bodied camera production in the consumer photography market.
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Recommended film stocks for the — format your camera takes.
C41
Lomography Color Negative 400 is a versatile ISO 400 C-41 color negative film with vivid, saturated colors, believed to be a Kodak Alaris-manufactured emulsion, available in 35mm and 120 formats.
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Lomography Color Negative 800 is a high-speed ISO 800 C-41 color negative film widely suspected to be a Kodak-manufactured emulsion, delivering vibrant colors and adequate grain for challenging lighting conditions.
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About this camera
The British Bakelite box camera that brought early plastic construction to the Brownie-format snapshot market.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 120 film, ~6 x 9 cm (~8 exposures per roll) |
| Mount | Fixed (non-interchangeable) |
| Years | |
| Lens | Single meniscus element, ~100mm equivalent |
| Shutter | Rotary sector: ~1/30s + B |
| Flash sync | None |
| Meter | None |
| Focus | Fixed (hyperfocal) |
| Battery | None |
| Viewfinder | Brilliant (reflecting) finder |
| Body material | Bakelite |
Kodak Limited, the British subsidiary of Eastman Kodak, operated manufacturing facilities at Harrow in Middlesex and developed several camera models specifically for the British and Commonwealth market, sometimes diverging from the American product line in both design and materials. The Hawkette emerged around 1930 as part of this British product development effort, adopting Bakelite at a point when the material was becoming commercially viable for consumer goods -- radios, telephones, and kitchen items manufactured from Bakelite became widespread in Britain through the late 1920s.
The use of Bakelite in a camera body was not unique to Kodak -- German manufacturers were also experimenting with plastics in camera construction during the same period -- but the Hawkette represents an early and commercially successful application of the material in a mass-market box camera context. The rigid plastic body offered manufacturing consistency and moisture resistance advantages over the cardboard-and-leatherette construction of the standard Brownie line.
Specific production dates and the full range of Hawkette variants are not well documented in available sources. The camera appears in period British trade catalogues from the early 1930s and was likely produced through the mid-1930s before the market moved toward folding and more capable fixed-lens cameras.
The Hawkette is historically interesting primarily as an early example of plastic camera bodies in mass production. Bakelite's properties -- rigid, machinable, electrically insulating, available in deep colors -- made it attractive for camera manufacturers looking to move away from cardboard and leatherette construction. Cameras like the Hawkette laid groundwork for the fully plastic consumer cameras that became standard in the postwar period and eventually for the all-plastic bodies of 1970s and 1980s point-and-shoot cameras.
The British manufacture is also notable: Kodak Limited at Harrow was a significant industrial facility whose output is less frequently catalogued than the American Kodak Rochester operation. Hawkette cameras represent a distinct strand of the Kodak story -- adapting the Brownie format for a British manufacturing context and a British consumer market with slightly different retail price points and distribution channels.
For contemporary collectors, the Hawkette is an approachable piece of early industrial design in a functional photographic instrument. The Bakelite body has held up well structurally compared to cardboard Brownies of similar vintage, and the cameras are generally in better condition than their age might suggest.
Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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